Putin leans on banks to fuel housing binge in economic push

Moscow

IT boomed while the rest of Russia bled. Now, mortgage lending offers the best chance yet of unlocking what may be the economy's greatest untapped resource.

With almost half of Russians living in disintegrating Soviet housing stock built before 1980, banks have taken advantage of state subsidies to hand out mortgages with abandon while other consumer lending withers. As the economy stabilises following two years of recession, the number of people taking out home loans is set for a record in 2017 after the amount has grown 29 per cent so far this year. Mortgages as a share of economic output in Russia are still at about a third the level of former communist states in Eastern Europe.